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The Lee Legacy
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Business New Haven
10/19/1998
By: BNH
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It's a measure of how time flies, we suppose, that most of the people reading this had not yet reached the age of majority when New Haven Mayor Richard C. Lee left City Hall at the conclusion of his eighth term in office in 1969.
Nevertheless, the 16 years Lee spent in City Hall shaped the Elm City and its fortunes for the second half of the 20th century. Indeed, it may not be too much to say that future historians will portray Lee as the leading figure in the tableau of 20th-century New Haven.
Now 82 and in frail health, Lee was feted October 14 by 500 well-wishers at the Omni Hotel, and the old federal courthouse on Church Street hard by City Hall was renamed in his honor.
Press accounts of the event seemed oddly bereft of historical context, perhaps because news reporting is by and large a young person's game, and in a secondary market such as New Haven, broadcast and print media reporters come and go at dizzying speed, regarding their time here as little more than dues paid on their way to better postings in, say, Charlotte or Jacksonville.
Ironically, Lee himself was once one of them. In 1934, fresh out of high school, Lee went to work as a reporter at the old Journal-Courier because his immigrant family hadn't the wherewithal to send him to college. Those were the days before reporters styled themselves “professionals,” and the job of scrambling down a dark alley to be the first at a crime scene wasn't much esteemed.
Lee moved up, but unlike his rootless successors today, he never moved out, going to work in the PR department at Yale and entering politics as an alderman as war clouds gathered in Europe.
Following a stint in the wartime Army, Lee returned home to Yale and his burgeoning political career. His exertions in the latter arena were rewarded in 1949 when he was tapped by Democratic boss John Golden to run against William Celentano. He lost that race, lost a second bid two years later but prevailed at last in 1953.
The forces at work in post-war New Haven set the city on a path that has defined its fortunes for a half-century now. The G.I. Bill enabled returning veterans to buy and build their own homes, and increasing numbers of them did so outside the city, where real estate was plentiful and cheap. The interstate highway system accelerated the exodus, with shops and businesses soon to follow.
Into this breach Lee cast his own considerable energies and the talents of the best minds he could muster - the “biggest muscles,” he called them. Aided by non-politicians like Edward Logue and Ralph Taylor, Lee sought to stem the tide of urban flight by razing downtown's worst slum (the Oak Street neighborhood), building shiny new department stores and a mall and creating fast, direct access into the city center via the Oak Street Connector.
For good or ill, under Lee things got done and bricks and mortar got laid. By the 1960s, the eyes of urban planners nationwide were on Lee and his “model city.” Lee the politician could have parlayed that spotlight into bigger things - a Senate seat, or the governor's office. But the vision of Lee the man never focused much on the world beyond the city line. In scope of ego, intellect and ambition, Dick Lee and New Haven seemed to be just about a perfect fit.
To some, Lee today is reviled as the “man who destroyed downtown New Haven.” And given the decay into which some of his most prized redevelopment projects have crumbled, that characterization is understandable.
A more measured assessment might be that Lee's efforts delayed downtown's ultimate decay, perhaps by decades, until the Malley's and Macy's dominos fell at last, placing an exclamation point at the end of New Haven's reign as a regional retail center.
Much more shocking today than the many who criticize the Lee legacy are those whose utter ignorance of it make it impossible for them to grasp the economic and political forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, the Elm City's fortunes. For better and for worse, the legacy of Mayor Richard C. Lee and the history of 20th-century New Haven will be forever inseparable.
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